I have to avoid antibiotics like the plague, or my GI tract goes crazy for a long time. In fact, I feel like every time I'm on them, I lose a little more of my GI function permanently. I try to eat yogurt and take probiotics, but they don't seem to help.

Recently my surgeon told me I might need a knee replacement in the future, and I would need to take alot of antibiotics. He was very flexible recently when I had a knee arthroscopy, and didn't make me take the post-surgery antibiotics (since they are a bit of over-kill). I was grateful. But it got me to wondering how you all handle antibiotics........especially after a surgery. Thanks!

I had to go on some for a few days prior to surgery because I had a low-grade temp and perhaps a slightly elevated white count (it was a quickie urinalysis, so not completely positive). I told the nurse that antibiotics do a number on me and she said if they messed me up after surgery, to just quit taking them. It was only a 7-day supply anyway--more to prep me than to fix me afterwards (I'd had a cold just prior to surgery and I know the fever was from it; and, of course, antibiotics won't help a cold anyhow). I took them up until surgery and one afterwards but then I quit them. My pain meds made me constipated, but after I got over that inital bout, I'm having more D than usual and I wonder if it's not the antibiotics I took, despite taking a probiotic with every pill. So I've gone back on the probiotics just in case; hopefully all of my bowel problems are just related to the surgery and all the meds I was on and I'll be back to normal in a few days. Oh, that and I ate a lot of junk food just after surgery because I felt like I deserved it, lol.

THanks Keriamon, Good luck with your recuperation. When I used to think I had Lyme disease and spent alot of time on a Lyme forum, I was told that you shouldn't take a probiotic with an antibiotic, that it can sort of lessen the effectiveness of the antibiotic.......so I would take it in-between the antibiotic pills. Have you ever heard of that?

I can't imagine why it would lessen the effect of the antibiotic. The antibiotic is in there to kill everything. The probiotic is in there to give you good things. Unless the antibiotic gets so hung up on killing all of your good things that it doesn't take the time to kill your bad things, I don't see what the harm is. If anything, I would be more concerned that I was lessening the chances of my probiotic by taking it at the same time. But I also know that if I don't take them together, I'll forget to take one or both, so better to have some fewer good things get in than to forget and have none at all.

Hi, Cathy A...it's me again. I have no problems with IBS and antibiotics. But I am allergic to medicines and have a limited number of options that I can use for antibiotics. I can take the mycin family which is very large and sulphur drugs.